quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: In very serious news, it looks like China may be facing an asset bubble collapse similar to what caused the whole Great Recession in (2007 was it?), its one of those things if it happens the world is going to be economically screwed and ...
Meh, we've been at this before both in and out of this thread. For example, three years ago
Which isn't to say that I think China won't ever have an economic crisis, of course it will, what I lack confidence in is the ability for anyone to predict with any good accuracy when it will happen.
There's this especially amusing guy who makes the rounds on FoxNews, Gordon Chang which has predicting the imminent collapse of China since he published a book in 2001. In other words, the US he wrote the book right before one American recession and we've lived through another American recession without his prediction coming to pass.
And he's still at it.
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Re: Hong Kong. This would be toward the end of May, although I won't have much more than a layover in Hong Kong. So many places to see, so little time Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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This article is a year old, but it's an ongoing problem. Chinese hackers infiltrated ASIO (Australia's version of MI5) years ago,and much more deeply than initially admitted to by the government.
Is it any wonder that when Prime Minister Julliard was replaced that her opponents had no intention of changing her decision banning Hua Wei from bidding on building Australia's broadband network?
More recently, American engineers at DuPont were convicted for selling IP (blue prints for a factory, formulas for proprietary chemicals) to a government owned Chinese firm which then created the largest production facility for titanium oxide. It's a 20 billion dollar a year business, and DuPont has enjoyed a majority share of the market.
Which isn't to say the NSA isn't seeking to put backdoor exploits in Huawei gear, or Cisco units, were' talking about two very different outcomes.
The US spying results in us knowing what the Chinese are doing, and crafting foreign policy.
The Chinese spying results in them knowing what Americans are doing, and crafting foreign policy, and selling commercial secrets to their favored firms who then run ours out of business.
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"We have been living in a reality that provided a false sense of well-being, while being robbed blind and impoverished. Want to find the missing middle class? It’s alive and well, in China and South Korea. Indeed, the global middle class is growing, according to the World Bank. Just not in the Inventing Nations." -Mark Anderson (Discussing the abysmal state of cyber security).
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The anonymous Chinese government blogger informs the American running dog that he's currently on vacation and has wisely decided against entering a drive by conversation by phone since the points of disagreement are too numerous.
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Which reminds me Mucus. Do you know of any good Cantonese teaching programs, apps, or resources? I really want to do as much learning as I can in the 3 months I have. Ideally I want to be able to be able to perform basic functions solely in Cantonese before I leave Shenzhen.
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I'm pretty sure I suck at learning different languages, but here goes.
I picked up a good cantonese-mandarin-english books of example conversation s for everyday life. I think I got it in a Beijing bookstore and I don't have it handy, so I'll link it here when I get a chance.
Pleco is a pretty cool app, mostly designed for Mandarin but is starting with Cantonese support, I definitely recommend that.
One problem is that Cantonese doesn't seem to have a very popular standard of transliteration like pinyin, but this also frees you to focus on speech. And it seems like to me that you don't have to stress out about tones a lot, Hong Kong cinema has many actors with mainland accents and distorted tones from the mainland.
That brings up what was the best way for me, watch some Stephen Chow movies or some of Wong Kar Wai's stuff like 2046, they sometimes allow the actors to converse in Cantonese if they are Cantonese and Mandarin if they are Mandarin so you get both in a conversation.
Had some relatives that used karaoke. YMMV.
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Oh, for fun there are two YouTube channels. CarlosDouh and Off The Great Wall. The former focuses on Cantonese slang, the latter sometimes has paired Cantonese and Mandarin videos. The Chinese relatives one is especially fun/sad.
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In case you're curious, off the top of my head, Gong Li, Xiao Wei, and Zhang Ziyi speak Mandarin in Hong Kong films. Carina Lau, Tang Wei, and Shu Qi learn to speak Cantonese during their films (I think anyways). Jet Li just plain gets dubbed.
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A specific movie I can recommend would be Comrades, Almost a Love Story. Not only does Leon Lai's character learn Cantonese during the course of the movie but its an exceptional movie about the Hong Kong experience as well.
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In other news I am now in China, and I am going to be spending a lot of time on buses and trains.
edit: Also I thought day 2 I was done with jet lag as I managed to comfortably stay up until 9:00pm. My brain woke me up at 2:00am. Not sure how today is going to pan out, but I start work so hooray for having no choice but to soldier through.
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It's kinda funny how the office staff will have a disagreement which sounds increasingly difficult to resolve, and their Mandarin reaches a certain energy level at which point they all spontaneously switch to Cantonese and suddenly everybody's friends again.
This isn't to say arguments in Cantonese can't happen, but it seems like when they want to keep things formal they stick to Mandarin, when they want to break the tension and be chummy they switch.
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A particularly notable Sinica podcast highlighting the expected bad news, upheaval and protests in Hong Kong plus some really good news: there's been a dramatic drop in the suicide rate in China, particularly among rural females to the extent that China has one of the lowest in the world *plus* there has been a big spike in the suicide rate among CCP officials.
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I finished listening to the China History Podcast fascinating three partner on Edmund Backhouse, the apparently brilliant writer and scammer who recently re-emerged in popular culture fame for his claims of being being sodomized by Empress Cixi's clit. Yeah, you heard me.
quote:Shandong, their home province, is the heart of the Church of Almighty God, a cult that believes that Jesus has risen in the shape of a 40-something Chinese woman named Yang Xiangbin, also sometimes known as Lightning Deng.
Today, five members of the cult will go on trial in Yantai, a seaside city in Shandong, for murdering a 37-year-old woman in a branch of McDonald's while she waited for her husband and seven-year-old son.
No one intervened to stop the killing, which was caught on smartphone cameras, as Zhang Lidong, an unemployed salesman, three of his children and his partner tried to enlist the woman and then bludgeoned her to death when they failed.
quote:"I have seen some of their teaching material," said Mr Peng. "It begins just like normal Christianity, with no difference at all. But when you get more involved, they introduce the theory of [Mrs Yang] being 'Almighty God'."
Mr Peng said the teachings are straightforward. "They just want you to repeat over and over that you obey 'God', listen to her, and not fight back. And there are threats for those who think of quitting. After six months, a new member can be brainwashed."
This kind of cult is kinda flying under the media radar and could be potentially a pretty big deal, so its good to see it getting some independent Western investigation.
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When was the last time a Chinese Christian cult ever caused problems for China? Like, seriously?When?
Oh...at least 20 million people you say?....
This reminds me of Fa Lun Gong, it was incredibly widespread even within the government before people realized what was going on.
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Yeah, its crazy how they put in like the middle of the article, like BTW, this cult could have a million people already and I've never even heard of it until about a month ago.
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i'm really surprised a cult can spread that fast anywhere these days. must just be something about everyday life there or something
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In case you were not aware, in Hong Kong, students occupied government buildings over the weekend, and refused to disperse. Police responded with tear gas (Very unusual for Hong Kong where political protest is healthy and regular) on Sunday and that seems to have drawn thousands to the streets.
Monday morning travel is seriously disrupted in downtown with protestors refusing to vacate the streets. My father had to get off the bus well short of his stop and find another way in.
In case you need a primer. China promised way back when the 1997 turnover was being negotiated that in 2017 Hong Kong would be permitted to vote for their own Chief Executive Officer. Up until now a person is always nominated by a small pro-Beijing panel. Over the Summer China published a document called the "White Paper" that clearly placed the "one country" in a superior position to the "two systems" part of the statement. They also indicated that any CEO would have to be approved by Beijing, and *then* the Hong Kong people could vote on one of two candidates. So Pro-Beijing Candidate A or Pro-Beijing Candidate B. There were large protests in Hong Kong over the Summer while I was there, and a group called Occupy Central held an unofficial ballot where hundreds of thousands of people voted in support of reform.
Beijing responded with a rent-a-crowd counter protest and signaled they would not be capitulating on this point. It looked like perhaps the protests had run out of steam, but here we are.
1) The last significant use of tear gas was when the British used tear gas in Hong Kong in 1967. 30 years later, they were gone. 30 years out from 2014 is almost at the eve of the end of two systems, one country. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the CCP will be gone.
2) The pro-unification party/leader in Taiwan formally rejected Xi Jinping's stupid idea to bring up one country, two systems while on a trip there. Great timing!
3) Hong Kong had a significant role in sheltering Sun Yat-sen (credited, probably overly, with revolution against the Qing) and the CCP after Chiang Kai-shek crushed them in Shanghai. We know how both of those turned out. Third time's the charm? (Unfortunately, Beijing is probably well aware of this too)
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Migrants to China try to come to grips with the protests in Hong Kong.
The protests are still ongoing and it looks like both sides are digging trenches. Central, Admirality, and Causeway Bay are not Tiananmen Square, they are more like Wall Street. It's the center of finance and economic activity in Hong Kong. I'm not sure how long the protestors will be able to hold out but if they can manage it for weeks that would be incredible.
I've read several blogs about how the protestors are carefully recycling and cooking food supplied to them by sympathizers. Everything I've read seems to indicate that the protests have remained peaceful and non-violent.
I feel truly sad for the police many of whom I know sympathize with the protestors and yet they have to work 30 hour shifts in the heat because it's their job. I can't say I see a good outcome from these protests, but they are an important moment in Hong Kong history. People are making their statement to Beijing, and casting aside all uncertainty that Hong Kong wants to nominate and elect their CEO. It's only a question of will Beijing let them.
edit: So glad I got to have a taste of this while I was in Hong Kong last Summer. Love seeing all my friends from Hong Kong blow up Facebook with updates on the protests. The umbrella movement has all the makings of a major moment in Chinese history.
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"Yes, USA politics is as dirty as it gets. But it's not democracy that is doing this. It is the way they allowed the corruption to happen in the name of democracy that is wrong. We are in a different place, a different era, different circumstances and we are a different people. We just have to make it right. I'm not saying it is easy. But we must walk the path. Telling our children you cannot have democracy just because other countries did it wrong is like the fairy tale where Dame/Mother Gothel locking up Rapunzel in a tower and not allowing her to see the world because there are bad people "out there"."
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If they can capitalize on it. Occupy in America took a golden opportunity and frittered it away.
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I kind of doubt that the HK Occupy is going to have the same troubles endemic with Occupy's progressive stack uselessness and identity politics self-cannibalism
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So yesterday a rent-a-mob was sent to attack protestors in Mong Kok. Police response was very limited and permissive. One of the protesting groups cancelled the negotiations with Mr. Leung's second over the incident. Unity between the protestors seems to have frayed just a little bit.
Numbers have dwindled as well, but I don't think that means people won't stream back out again if the right things happen.
I'm not sure what sort of compromise is possible. Beijing seems to have locked themselves into an uncompromising position. Seems like the bare minimum would be permitting the people of Hong Kong to elect a percentage of the panel that selects the CEO, but I don't think even that could be put on the table by Beijing.
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The police still haven't tried to seriously enforce the government's demand the protestors clear the streets by this week. The protestors still appear to have a very healthy presence and entrenchment. I think so far we can expect the protestors really will stay for the long haul, and the people of Hong Kong are not resenting this development to the point the government doesn't have to actively do anything.
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